jack lang and the politics of festival; david looseley, Film
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French Cultural Studies
Jack Lang and the politics of festival
David Looseley
French Cultural Studies
1990; 1; 5
DOI: 10.1177/095715589000100102
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, 5-
Jack Lang
and the
politics
offestival
DAVID
LOOSELEY*
Mondial du Theatre de
Nancy
in
1965.
In
present-day
France,
few would need
to
enquire.
Since
his
appointment
as
Minister
of Culture
in
1981,
Lang
has
acquired
a
governmental
star
status
largely
unaltered
by
absence from office
between
1986
and
1988.1
His
public
image
is
not,
of
course,
entirely
flattering.
After the
publication
in
1982
of
La
Culture
en
veston
rose,
a
withering
attack
on
him
by
Patrice
de
Plunkett,
editor of
Le
Figaro
Magazine2
it
became
routine,
particularly
on
the
Right,
to
portray
him
as
the
vacuous
architect
of
a
flashy policy
aimed
merely
at
buying
the
nation’s
acquiescence
in
a
time
of
recession.
Although
more
muted
today,
this
demagogic
assessment
is
not
altogether unjust.
A
natural
missionary, Lang
remains
the emblem of Socialist
chic
to
the
young
and
impressionable.
For
a
number
of
years
now
he
has
conscientiously appeared
in
all the
right places,
from the
Stevie
Wonder
concert
in
1981 to
the Arche de
La
Defense
event
on
26
August
1989,
where he
appeared
on
stage
as one
of
the
many
’acts’ -
Bernard
Lavilliers,
Maxime
Leforestier,
Harlem
Desir
and
so on -
celebrating
in
words
or
music
the
Declaration of the
Rights
of
Man.
Indeed,
the
Bicentenary
celebrations
as a
whole,
for
which he
acquired
ministerial
responsibility
in
1988
were
only
the
latest
in
a
series
of
political spectacles
entrusted
to
his theatrical
talents,
among
them Mitterrand’s famous
pilgrimage
to
the Panth6on
in
May
1981,
stiff with
Republican
symbolism.
At
election-time
especially,
he has
repeatedly
served,
in
one
commentator’s
phrase,
as
the
’metteur
en
scene
et
en
The Modern
Languages
Centre,
University
of
Bradford, Bradford,
West
Yorkshire
BD71DP.
I
would like
to
acknowledge
the assistance of both the Leverhulme
Trust
and the
University
of
Bradford
in
the research
for this article. I
am
also
greatly
indebted
to
Madame Colette
Flon,
an
early
member
of the Festival’s
organizing
committee
and
currently
’administrateur
provisoire
charge
de la
liquidation
de 1’Association
CUIFERD’,
for
facilitating
access
to
the Festival archive
deposited
at
the
Archives
Municipales
in
Nancy
and for
making
available
to
me
her
personal
collection of documents
which is in
many
respects
richer. In
particular
it contains the
most
complete
collection
I
have
discovered
of the TUN’s various
publications.
_
1 A
survey,
published
in Le Nouvel
Observateur,
2
mars
1989, 48,
voted
him
most
popular
government
minister,
as
had other
polls
towards the end of the
1981-6
period.
2
*
Collection
Place
Publique
(Paris:
La
Table
Ronde, 1982).
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Qui
6tes-vous
Jack
Lang?’
asked
a
local
newspaper
covering
the Festival
6
musique
du
grand
show
gouvernemental’,’
flawless
government
spokesman
on
collective enthusiasm and the
meaning
of life.
His
lyrical allegiance
to
the
President
is
also
legendary, causing
him
to
be characterized
by
Catherine
Nay
as
the
’grand pratre
de la
flagornerie
mitterrandolâtre’,4
and
by Le
B6b6te Show
as a
bleating
goat.
Yet
the
question
asked
in
1965 cannot
be
so
easily
answered.
Lang’s
theatri-
cal
past,
particularly
the
Nancy
Festival,
goes
at
least
some
way
towards
correcting
the
image
of
cultural
cowboy, revealing
a
dedicated
activist
for
whom ministerial office
was
the
logical
outcome
of
a
serious
and unbroken
meditation,
rooted
in
practical
experience,
on
the
place
of culture
in
contem-
porary
society.
This earlier
Lang
has
to
an
extent
been
forgotten
amid
public
perceptions
of the
elegant
minister
who,
with both the
arts
and television
now
in
his
purview
as
well
as
the
Bicentenary
and the
grands
travaux,
will
probably shape
the institutional
landscape
of French
culture
into
the
1990s
and
who,
through
his ministerial
longevity
and closeness
to
the
President,
has
become
the
Malraux of the Mitterrand
years.
More
than his illustrious
pre-
decessor’s,
however,
Lang’s
career
is
a
genuinely interdisciplinary
one,
a
twenty-five-year episode
in
the
symbiotic relationship
between culture and
politics
in France.
Although
Lang
has been
a
university
teacher of law
since
the
mid-60s,
at
Nancy
and
subsequently
Nanterre,
the
politics
of culture have been his
real
vocation. As
a
student of law
at
the
University
of
Nancy
in
1957,
he sided with
Pierre
Mend6s
France,
becoming general
secretary
of
the
Jeunes
Radicaux
de
Meurthe-et-Moselle and
campaigning
for
Algerian independence.
In
1958,
he
was
excluded from the Radical
Party
alongside
other Mend6sistes and
helped
form
the
Parti
Socialiste
Autonome
(PSA)
and later the
PSU. In
his
introduc-
tion
to
fclats,
a
collection of
conversations
with
Lang
published
in
1978,
Jean-Denis
Bredin describes him
during
this
period
as
being
’d’une laicite
d’extrême-gauche’5
This
prise
de
position
was
to
determine his attitude
to
what
became
his
chief
concern
during
the
60s:
the theatre.
While
at
school,
Lang
had followed
courses
at
the
Conservatoire
de
Nancy:
’second
prix
de
diction’ in
1958,
as
de Plunkett
mockingly points
out
(p.
45).
In
his first
year
as a
student,
he and
a
friend,
tdouard
Guibert,
formed the
University’s
first student drama
group,
the Theatre
Universitaire
de
Nancy
(TUN). Returning
to
Nancy
in
1961
after
continuing
his studies
in
Paris,
he
revived the
flagging
group
by
staging
Camus’s
Caligula
during
1961
and
1962.
The
production
went
on
tour,
receiving good
reviews
and
winning
first
prize
at
the
competition
for
young
theatre
companies
held
in
Ppinal,
Lang’s
own
performance
in
the title role
being
singled
out
for
praise.~
It
was soon
obvious
Les
Sept
Mitterrand
ou
les
métamorphoses
d’un
septennat
(Paris:
Livre
de
Poche/Grasset, 1988),
30.
5 J.
Lang
and
J.-D.
Bredin
(with
notes
by
A.
Vitez),
Éclats
(Paris:
Simoën,
1978),
52.
Future
references
to
this work will
appear
in
the
text.
6
’Jack Lang,
en
Caligula, égale
les
plus
grands,
en
talent,
en
ferveur,
en mesure
et
en
puissance’,
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3 Le
Point,
10-16
juin
1985, 134.
4
7
that
the
group
would
not
be
just
another student
dramatics
society.
With
Lang
as
its
driving
force,
its activities
quickly
broadened
to
include the
production
of
a
journal,
a
series
of lectures
by
visiting
theatre
figures,
and
a
number
of
drama classes.
Lang
was
also
instrumental
in
reviving
the Federation
Nationale
des
Theatres
Universitaires,
with
Jean-Jacques
Hocquard
and
Jean-
Pierre
Miquel,
becoming
its
general
secretary
in
1962.
The Federation
soon
grew
to
include
all
the
university
groups
in
France
(fclats,
46J .~
What
linked
them above
all
was
the influence
of
Brecht and their desire
to
form
a new
avant-garde
that
would
challenge
established
bourgeois
theatre.
From
these
activities,
and with
the
Nancy
group
one
of
the
most
successful
in
the Federa-
tion,
Lang
developed
his
most
ambitious
project
to
date: the
launching
in
1963
of
an
international
festival
of student theatre.
After
a
difficult
start,
the first festival
was a
significant
success.
Over
the
next
few
years
the
event
grew
in size and
prestige
until
in
1968
it
threw
off its
student
origins
and
developed
into
a
vast
international carnival of
new
talent,
with attendances
during
the
70s
reaching
170,000.8
More
important
than
size,
however,
were
the Festival’s cultural and other
ambitions,
which
gradually
evolved
in
tandem
with,
and
at
times in
advance
of,
the
progress
of social
change
in France
during
the
60s.
The
theory
behind this evolution
was
almost
entirely
Lang’s
own.
The
most
distinctive
feature of his
thinking
in
these
early days
is
its
high
seriousness,
the
sense
he
conveys
of
a
cultural and social
mission
which
informs all the activities ofthe TUNand
transcends their
potentially
parochial
amateur nature:
’refusant de travailler
au
jour
le
jour
sans
plan
d’action
preetabli’,
he writes in
1964,
’le Theatre
Universitaire
[...]
entend
situer
[ses]
projets
pour
1964
dans
une
perspective globale
d6bordant
le cadre
trop exigu
de
I’ann6e
universitaire’.9
The first
step
in the
implementation
of
this
mission
was
to
define the
true
purpose
of
university
theatre. This
was
to
be the task of
the Festival.
From
the
start,
the Festival
was seen
by
Lang
as a
form
of
action,
of
provoca-
tion : ’Le
Festival
ne se
resume
pas
en une
&dquo;organisation&dquo;,
mais
se
caract6rise
par
un
esprit.
Il
ne se
contente
pas
d’accueillir,
de
recevoir:
il
incite,
il
Luxembourg
Tageblatt, quoted
in the
Journal
du Théâtre
Universitaire de
Nancy,
a
newspaper-
format
publication. Only
two
copies
are
available
at
the
Nancy
Municipal Library
(not
the Archives
Municipales),
one
dated
March
1963
and
a
slightly
earlier undated edition
(probably
from late
February-early
March).
The
quotation
is from the latter
(no
page
numbers). By
1964,
the
Journal
had
been
replaced
by
the Revue du Théâtre Universitaire de
Nancy (RTUN),
the switch from
newspaper
to
review
doubtless
indicating
more
academic
aspirations.
7
For
a more
detailed
analysis
of the Festival’s
evolution,
see
my
article ’The
Nancy
World Theatre
Festival,
1963-88’,
to
be
published
in
New Theatre
Quarterly, early
1990.
See also R.
Grünberg,
Nancy
sur
scènes:
au
carrefour
des
théâtres du
monde
(Ville
de
Nancy/Festival
Mondial du Théâtre,
1984),
a
limited
edition of
photographs
and documents from
1963 to 1983.
9
J. Lang, ’Nancy,
capitale
mondiale du théâtre
universitaire’, RTUN,
not
numbered (1964
festival
edition),
1-2
(p. 2).
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See
also
H. Hamon and P.
Rotman, Génération,
vol.I:
Les
Années de rêve
(Paris:
Seuil, 1987),
298-9.
8
8
aiguillonne’ .10
In
a
review
of the
1964
festival,
Nicole
Zand
maintains
that
a
number of
the
troupes
that
year
fell
into
one
of
two
categories:
those
for whom
the
duty
of student drama
was
to
pay
homage
to
the
great
classics
ancient
or
modern,
and those which
saw
it
as
essentially
a
laboratory
in
which
students,
untrammelled
by
the
commercial
constraints
which hinder
professional
theatre,
could be
in
the
vanguard
of
experimentation.11
This debate had
already
been evoked
by
the President of the Festival
jury
for that
year,
Jules
Romains. In
Lang’s
view,
Romains
had
implied
that
university
theatre should
limit itself
to
the academic
interpretation
of
classics. 12
The Festival
leadership
strenuously
rejected
this.
Romains
was
seeing
theatre
as an
essentially
liter-
ary,
text-based
genre,
a
fundamental if familiar
misunderstanding
of
its
true
nature
and
one
which the
very
notion
of
an
international theatre festival
belies.
To
Lang, Nancy
proved
the
existence
of ’une
&dquo;sp6cificit6
theatrale&dquo;
’.
When the
physicality
of theatre
is
fully exploited -
mime
and
gesture,
dance,
lighting,
sound and decor -
it is
capable
of
overcoming
linguistic
and
cultural
barriers.
Its
real
language
in
fact transcends
’Sire
le
mot’
to
operate
on a
quite
different level of
signification. 13
This
stance
clearly
owed much
to
the
pre-
sence
of the
1964
festival
of
Jerzy
Grotowski
who,
for
the first
time
outside
Poland,
had
given
a
demonstration
of
his
’poor
theatre’
which
rejected
con-
ventional dramatic
production
to
focus
on
the
signifying potential
of the
actor’s
body,
his
or
her
physical
presence
as
creative
agent
in
the theatrical
process.
This
view,
influenced
by
the wider
conceptions
of
Artaud,
was
to
become central
to
the
entire
Nancy experience.
But
the
TUN’s
objectives
were
not
exclusively
aesthetic.
It
also concerned
itself
increasingly
with the sociocultural dimension of theatre. The ideas of
Artaud
and
Grotowski
gave
rise
to
a
theatre de
recherche,
a
disconcerting,
sometimes
hermetic
experimentalism
which
might
be
seen as
repudiating
the
established
trend
since
1945
towards
a
people’s
theatre
pioneered
by
Jean
Vilar and others. The
Lang
of the
mid-1960s, however,
did
not
see
the
matter
in such conflictual
terms.
For
him,
the
object
of
university
theatre
was
both
to
advance research
into
new
dramatic forms and
to
widen
popular
access,
supporting
decentralization
by
encouraging practical participation
at
all
levels,
thereby helping
a
wider
public
become
theatrically
literate. The
Festi-
val
particularly
was
to
serve as
’une 6tonnante
ecole de formation
pour
le
spectateur’.14
This
slightly
patronizing
educational
mission
was accom-
J. Lang,
’Plaidoyer
pour
un
festival’,
Théâtre
et
Université,
no.
10
(1967
festival
edition),
no
page
numbers
[p.
5
of
1-7].
Théâtre
et
Université
(TU)
replaced
RTUN in
1966
and became the
review of
the CUIFERD. The
change
signified
further
pretensions
to
being
a
fully
fledged
academic
journal,
whose
aim
was
to
publish
new
theatre
research,
documents
concerning
the
practice
of
theatre,
and
plays.
More
generally,
it
sought
to
provide
university
theatre with
a
voice and
an
archive.
Lang
was
the editor.
11
10
Le
Monde,
30
avril
1964, 14.
J. Lang,
’Le
festival
et
son
public’,
RTUN,
1965,
2-4
(p. 3).
As in
1964,
the
1965
issues
are
not
numbered.
This
one
appears
to
be the first
of the
year.
The second
was
the
festival edition.
13
12
Ibid.,
3.
14
Ibid.,
4.
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